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Tag Archives: Supreme Court

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 7, 2017:

Nicolas Maduro, the communist thug who now rules Venezuela

Following the typical historical pattern of socialist takeovers, the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly (NCA) replaced the duly elected National Assembly on Friday, opening the ceremony with a speech from a Cuban communist guerrilla, followed by a speech reflecting a total disconnect from reality, and ending with giving the boot to a former Chavista who has in recent months become an embarrassment.

Reiterating the theme that the United States, and especially President Donald Trump, is responsible for Venezuela’s troubles, Fernando Soto Rojas, a Cuban-trained guerilla, opened the meeting of the NCA, shouting, “Yankee imperialism has not been able to stop the march of the people!”

The NCA then appointed Maduro’s foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez as head of the new body. Her total disconnect from reality was exposed by her claim that

Now that protesters have left the scene and Maduro has removed the primary thorn in his side, the socialist revolution begun by Marxist Hugo Chavez two decades ago now appears to be complete.

Before the new illegally elected National Constituent Assembly (NCA) took over on Friday, Maduro’s Prosecutor General, Luisa Ortega Diaz (shown), had become a thorn in his side. A hard-core Chavista, Diaz was appointed in 2007 and helped Hugo Chavez cement his position in place as Venezuela’s Marxist dictator. When her term ran out in 2014 she was appointed for another six-year term.

For more than six years Republicans have promised that, given the chance, they would repeal the odious, expensive, and unconstitutional healthcare takeover called ObamaCare. Seven times they have voted to repeal it, knowing that then-President Obama, its primary promulgator and author, would veto it.

But voters believed them and when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in November, it was going to be a shoo-in: full and total repeal at the top of the list. At least that’s what Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama, thought. So he prepared a bill: simple, straightforward, two sentences long:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 28, 2017:

The Coat of arms of Venezuela

In its foreign travel advisory issued Thursday, the U.S. State Department warned American visitors against traveling to Venezuela and ordered family members of U.S. government employees at its embassy in Caracas to leave the country. It also offered assistance for those employees wanting to leave before the country’s crucial and controversial election on Sunday. The order and warnings were due to “social unrest, violent crime and pervasive food and medicine shortages” in the country.

Sunday’s vote could be crucial for the direction of the country run by Marxist Nicolas Maduro. Already rumors of vote fraud are suggesting that

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, July 26, 2017:

U.S. Sanctuary Cities Map: cities that have adopted “sanctuary” ordinances

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions upped the ante on sanctuary cities on Tuesday by declaring that any state not complying with requests concerning illegal immigrants held in local jails will lose federal grant money. He stated:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, July 25, 2017:

The flag of Washington. D.C.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday 2-1 that the district’s third attempt to keep guns out of the hands of its citizens is unconstitutional. The matter has been festering since the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller that individuals have a right to possess a firearm. But that ruling left open the issue of whether that right extends beyond the individual’s home.

The District of Columbia has for 40 years fought to keep guns out of the hands of private citizens, claiming that the city was

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, July 20, 2017:

The terse two-paragraph Supreme Court order issued Wednesday was self-explanatory: President Donald Trump’s effort to ban immigrants from six countries was upheld, with modifications. As the first paragraph stated:

The Government’s motion seeking clarification of our order of June 26, 2017, is denied. The District Court order modifying the preliminary injunction with respect to refugees covered by a formal assurance is stayed pending resolution of the Government’s appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

President Trump’s first ban, issued in January, resulted in chaos at the nation’s airports until it was blocked by the courts. The administration reissued the ban in March but that one was also blocked by the courts. In June the Supreme Court overruled lower courts’ decisions and allowed Trump’s ban to proceed, adding the proviso that his ban wouldn’t apply to people who have “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

An Obama-appointed judge in Hawaii thought that the administration’s reading that that “bona fide relationship” only included spouses, children, parents, fiancés and fiancées was far too restrictive:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, July 5, 2017:

The decision by Florida Circuit Court Judge Milton Hirsch on Monday delighted opponents of the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws. Declaring on procedural grounds that changes just enacted into law by the Florida legislature were unconstitutional, Hirsh’s decision “totally derails these changes to ‘stand your ground’ [law],” chortled Tamara Lave, law professor at the University of Miami’s School of Law. She added that an appeal could put the matter before the state’s Supreme Court.

The original “Stand Your Ground” law passed by Florida’s legislature in 2005 opened the door for nearly two dozen other states to pass similar laws. They expanded the so-called “Castle Doctrine” — no duty to retreat from a threat of violence in one’s home — to include

One of the essential doctrines involved in limiting government is the separation of powers. By putting governmental powers into separate hands, the founders hoped that each would constrain the other and thus protect liberty. Article I of the federal Constitution states that “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article III states that “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

Florida’s constitution is very similar:

The judicial power shall be vested in a supreme court, district courts of appeal, circuit courts, and county courts. No other courts may be established by the state, any political subdivision, or any municipality.

In one of the more inane and nonsensical effusions of rejoicing over the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to let stand a lower court’s anti-gun decision, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra sullied his credibility and those of similar view with this:

[It’s] welcome news for California and gun safety everywhere. It leaves in place an important and common-sense firearm regulation, one that promotes public safety, respects 2nd Amendment rights and values the judgments of sheriffs and police chiefs throughout the state on what works best for their communities.

This packs more misstatements, half-truths and just plain damnable lies into one paragraph than has been seen in recent years. By disarming its citizens, California has virtually guaranteed an increase in violent crime, especially gun violence. The onerous restrictions on the Second Amendment applied to law-abiding citizens fail to respect it but instead do serious if not fatal damage to it. And as far as judgments by local sheriffs and police officers as to the applicability of the Second Amendment to its citizens, one needs only to bring to mind the history of tyrants operating without restraint.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 27, 2017:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest member on the court.

By refusing to consider Peruta v. San Diego on appeal on Monday, the Supreme Court once again sidestepped an opportunity to clarify the Second Amendment issue of carrying a firearm outside the home. That issue has remained open since the court’s decisions in Heller and McDonald, dating back to 2008 and 2010, respectively. Those cases didn’t clarify whether the right guaranteed in the Second Amendment extends to public places, and anti-gun states such as California have rushed in with state laws that virtually prohibit the exercise of rights guaranteed by that amendment.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 21, 2017:

Jay Sekulow lecturing

Following a whirlwind tour of weekend mainstream media talk shows, Jay Sekulow has emerged as President Donald Trump’s latest legal advisor. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, made it official on Tuesday: “Jay is a member of the president’s legal team in the fullest sense of the word. He is also authorized to speak on television or otherwise.”

Sekulow wrote of his first presentation of a case before the Supreme Court: “Me, a short Jewish guy from Brooklyn, New York, went before the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States to defend the constitutional right to stand in an airport and hand out tracts about Jesus!”

The group he was defending was Jews for Jesus, and Sekulow was serving as its chief counsel.

Jews for Jesus? Sekulow couldn’t make this up. Raised in a nominally Jewish household, he met a “Jesus Freak” while attending Mercer University (then called Atlanta Baptist College), who became a close friend. Sekulow’s skepticism that Jesus is the Jewish messiah turned to curiosity, and he determined to get to the bottom of the matter:

Little is likely to change for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who just learned on Friday that his arrest warrant issued by Swedish authorities back in 2010 has been revoked. Until the British government decides to revoke its own warrant for Assange jumping bail in November of that year, he’ll stay put inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Sweden’s top prosecutor, Marianne Ny, said she gave up trying to serve him but added that “if he were to return to Sweden before the statute of limitations on this case expires in August 2020, the preliminary investigation could be resumed.”

At issue was a rape charge levied against Assange by two women with whom he had sexual relations while in Sweden to make a speech in 2010. When Interpol issued a Red Notice for his arrest, Assange gave himself up. In December that year he posted bail in London but

The Courage Foundation released a letter on Monday signed by more than 100 free speech activists (including Noam Chomsky and Edward Snowden) asking President Donald Trump to drop his administration’s investigation into Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks.

The Courage Foundation funds legal defense for whistleblowers and journalists such as Assange and Snowden. The letter presses the point that the real issue is freedom of the press under the First Amendment:

The threat to WikiLeaks escalates a long-running war of attrition against the great virtue of the United States: free speech. The Obama Administration prosecuted more whistleblowers than all presidents combined and opened a Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks that had no precedent….

It is reported that charges, including conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act are being considered against members of WikiLeaks, and that charging WikiLeaks Editor, Julian Assange, is now a priority of the Department of Justice.

This refers to Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ comments during his visit to the southern border last month:

Article V supporters of a constitutional convention to rewrite the United States Constitution should pay careful attention to what Venezuela’s Marxist President Nicolas Maduro is proposing, and why. As his country descends from violence into chaos he is making his final move: proposing a rewrite of the country’s constitution put in place in 1999 under the country’s previous leader, Hugo Chavez. Chavez said it would last for “centuries.” If Maduro is successful, it will have lasted less than 20 years.

Maduro has proposed a “special assembly” made up of his own supporters to craft the new constitution. It would ban political parties and free elections. It would legitimize all of his previous unconstitutional acts and essentially make him a dictator for life.

Another crack opened in the wall supporting Marxist dictator Nicolas Maduro’s administration: On Monday Major General Miguel Rodriguez Torres, who ran Maduro’s intelligence service until he was fired in 2014, said his country is moving toward civil war: “We’re seeing much larger masses protesting across all major cities, including the working-class neighborhoods. The government is losing control.” He added:

In less than 30 minutes, President Donald Trump hit all the hot buttons, feeding red meat to thousands attending the National Rifle Association’s national convention in Atlanta on Friday.

Trump, the first sitting president to address the NRA convention since President Ronald Reagan in 1983, began by voicing his appreciation to the NRA and its membership for its and their early and generous support of his presidential campaign. The NRA first endorsed Trump for president in March 2016 and subsequently pumped $30 million into his campaign, running four times as many ads in his support than it did for Mitt Romney in 2012.

He reminded his raucous supportive audience of how the national media tried to suppress voter turnout in 2016 by repeatedly stating that

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, April 28, 2017:

Big Taxi just had a Belshazzar moment. In Chapter 5 of Daniel, Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, was hosting a feast and drinking from holy vessels that had been looted from Israel’s first temple. The hand of God appeared, writing on the wall. Daniel is called and reads it: “God has numbered your days.”

When the Supreme Court declined on Monday to consider an appeal from Big Taxi in Chicago, the handwriting was on the wall: your days are numbered.

By declining to hear an appeal, the Supreme Court on Monday essentially declared that rules protecting the taxi cartel in Chicago were null and void, thus expanding passenger freedom. As an attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ), which represented Chicago Uber driver Dan Burgess, explained: “Today’s decision makes clear what [IJ] has said for years. The Constitution does not require [city] governments to stick with outdated protectionist regulations in the face of technological innovation.”

When Uber and other ride-sharing companies entered the Chicago market several years ago, they soon became a thorn in the side of the taxi cartel that had operated under protectionist rules dating back to 1937. Those rules

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, April 19, 2017:

South Carolina State House

In its opinion offered by the paper’s editorial board, the New York Times’ insertion last week into the debate going on in South Carolina over constitutional carry just might backfire. Citizens there might not like the Times’ efforts to characterize them as hillbillies, rednecks, and in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. The Times chose to quote a state representative who opposes the bill: “All it does is it makes these good ol’ boys who like to have guns strapped to their hips not conceal them.”

It had harsh descriptors for those favoring the right of South Carolinians to carry a sidearm – openly or concealed – calling those legislators favoring it “tone-deaf” and the bill itself “dangerous” and “laissez-faire.”

The bill passed the state House a week earlier, 64-46, and is headed for the state Senate for its consideration. The governor, Henry McMaster, is ready to sign it into law if it reaches his desk.

It may be that the Times knows that it is fighting a losing battle as momentum to regain full and proper rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment continues across the land. At the moment,